"Do people without talent crave concepts?"

Last time, we introduced "Pink Soy Sauce" (Tottori Prefecture) as a recommendation from Kenichiro Kurita, president of the "Yon'nana Club" celebrating its 10th anniversary. He added, "One more thing. The 'Persimmon Butter' from Nara Yoshino Ishii, a persimmon specialist, is also interesting!"

Not oyster butter, but persimmon butter. I hear it even won the 2016 Hometown Specialty Product of the Year Grand Prize in the Regional Revitalization Grand Prize Product category. It's a jam made by carefully simmering locally grown persimmons that were difficult to distribute due to minor blemishes, then blending them with butter. I think persimmon preferences divide into the crunchy camp and the creamy camp, and this one leans more towards the creamy side. It has a rich depth and paired wonderfully with toast.

By the way, it must have been about five years ago. After discussions with President Kurita, we developed "Wow, they have this!" as the phrase representing the Yonnana Club.

This phrase should give customers a sense that Yonnana Club isn't "a place to buy daily necessities like a local supermarket" nor "a place to search for what you want among a huge selection like a major online retailer." At the same time, it should make Yonnana Club employees aware that they must not only use the local newspaper network to uncover hidden gems, but also organize that information and clearly "propose" it to customers.

We believe the concept of "(Local) 'Wow, they have this here!' (a place to discover such things)" is incredibly important for advancing our business.

However.

The other day, while reading back issues of a magazine, I came across phrases like "I don't create concepts" and "People without talent crave concepts." So, do you truly believe a "concept" is necessary?

In this series, we define concept as "a new perspective for solving problems to realize a vision." It's the translation of that gut feeling ("Maybe this will work...") that emerges during messy trial-and-error into language (= shareable information) during discovery mode. So why bother translating it into language? Because we're operating under the assumption of advancing things within an "organization." If you're an artist working alone, you don't need to share your intent with anyone before completing your work. Even if you're running a project with just a few people who can share that "vague feeling," you probably still don't need a concept. But in real business, you need employees, partners, investors, and many others to understand what you want to achieve.

My opinion is this: "For us non-geniuses, a concept is definitely key to harnessing the power of an organization." What do you think?

President Kurita envisions that "You've got to be kidding me!" will also appear in the next decade of the Yon-Nana Club.

" Our theme for the next decade is bridging the gap between small and medium-sized enterprises nationwide and large corporations, growing together with local businesses. Large corporations are blessed with people, resources, capital, and information, but small and medium-sized enterprises lack these. It's a truly harsh situation. While large corporations are taking successive measures against Japan's population decline and economic trends, SMEs and micro-businesses are struggling to do anything. As a result, the gap is widening at an unbelievable speed. The Yon-nana Club aims to resolve regional disparities by transforming these SMEs and micro-businesses into 'Wow, this exists!' success stories."

While concepts have a lifespan (we'll discuss this another time), please continue to keep an eye on the Yonnana Club moving forward.

Enjoy!